South East Asia & South America Stand Out As Expat Destinations Where Money Goes Furthest

Money can be one of, if not the biggest headache when it comes to living abroad. How to spend it, how to access it, what currency to deal in, and whether and where you be should be saving it.

According to Internations’ Global Expat Survey, Vietnam scored highest amongst survey respondents for Personal Finance, and Cost of Living, with Colombia and Myanmar taking the runners up spots in the former category, and Mexico and Colombia in the latter.

28% of respondents living in Vietnam were more than satisfied on both counts, which outperforms the global average by more than 10%. 93% agreed that they had enough or more than enough to get by, with just 7% struggling to make ends meet – outperforming the global average of 77%. Nearly one in five residents of Vietnam felt that they had far more than they needed to get by.

Colombia achieved an 80% approval rate for personal finance; with only 14% dissatisfied with the state of their finances overall, Colombia has a lower percentage than the global average of 23%. 7 out of 10 expats in Colombia said that finances were a factor in their decision to move to the country.

Another South East Asian country, Myanmar, scored highly, in part due to the high number of expats in the country working in Senior Management positions, while at the other end of the scale, Italy, Israel and Greece were identified as the lowest ranking countries. Greece in particular was identified as a tricky financial climate, due to relatively high costs of household income.

Portugal was the highest ranked European country, with Mexico and the Philippines helping SE Asia and South America claim the majority of the top rankings.

Interestingly, nearly one out of five survey respondents living abroad were undecided about how long they would remain there. Nearly one or three planned to stay there permanently and only one in twenty for less than a year.

The most common nationalities surveyed by Internations were from the US, followed by Indian, French, Italian and Dutch.

South East Asia and South America are both places that benefit from advanced fintech services that allow residents to transfer money in a variety of ways; and London is another fintech hub that is home to numerous money transfer brokers and money transfer operators, many of them startups like TransferWise and Azimo, that rival traditional service providers.

Thanks to these developments, living abroad should present far less of a financial issue today than ever before, with all the the tools that you need to make the necessary arrangements literally at your fingertips.

There are even apps out there that will help you manage your personal spending and manage your bill payments for you. After all, you can never learn enough about where your money goes.